san francisco is determined to cram all the fun it can into the weekend we'll be in new york: bimbo's will have modest mouse, guided by voices, and the donnas, boom boom boom. i should be ashamed of the donnas, but few can claim immunity to palo alto high school girls with a straight face. try it.

on absence and fondness, i never gave my thumb the credit it was due. it leapt beneath a vegetable knife yesterday - baby, if i'd known you felt so low - and i now have a lovely right fin. i really only hacked the tip, but jesus it hurts to touch things. appreciate the marginalized, i say. hug a catholic. or an anarchist.

If you ask her what is a favorite story she has written, she will hesitate for a long time and then say it may be this story that she read in a book once: an English language teacher in China asked his Chinese student to say what was the happiest moment in his life. The student hesitated for a long time. At last he smiled with embarrassment and said that his wife had once gone to Beijing and eaten duck there, and she often told him about it, and he would have to say the happiest moment of his life was her trip, and the eating of the duck.